MANILA, Philippines–President Rodrigo Duterte has said he would not hesitate to use police power for the government’s pandemic response, particularly to take over hotels so they can accommodate COVID-19 patients or to secure medicines from warehouses if necessary.
Duterte was responding to critics who had found the administration’s handling of the health crisis to be inadequate.
“We were not lacking. Right after the [World Health Organization] advisory, the following day or the day after, sometime within 48 hours, we already had the task force,” Duterte on Thursday night said in a televised public address, the second he held this week.
The government, he said, can take over…
Keep on reading: No more Covid-19 beds? Duterte cites ‘police power’ to take over hotels